What did I take from the research in AMT to the research in Computer Science and Software Engineerin

1
What did I take from the research in AMT to the
research in Computer Science and Software
Engineering Education?

• Orit Hazzan
• Department of Education on Technology and Science
• Technion
• October 16, 2007

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Abstraction

• Kramer (2007)
• Two aspects
• The first emphasizes the process of removing
  detail to simplify and focus attention
• The second emphasizes the process of
  generalization to identify the common core or
  essence.

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Research
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The theme of reducing abstraction (Hazzan, 1999)

• Students use ways by which they reduce the level
  of abstraction of abstract (mathematical)
  concepts.
• Computability
• Abstract algebra
• Differential equations
• Data structures
• Graph theory
• School mathematics

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Reducing abstraction

• Abstraction level as the quality of the
  relationships between the object of thought and
  the thinking person (Wilensky, 1991)
• Retreat to familiar mathematical structures
• Abstraction level as reflection of the
  process-object duality
• Show strong need for canonical procedures which
  reflects process conception
• More

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Show strong need for canonical procedures

• Three main ways to solve an exam
• Constructing a Turing machine
• Using Rice theorem
• Defining a reduction between two languages

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Show strong need for canonical procedures

• Given L3
• For determining weather L3 ? R students could
• use Rice theorem or
• construct a reduction from one of the non
  recursive languages.
• Relying on Rice theorem is a simpler and shorter
  process.
• Students prefer building a reduction.

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Solving Question 3A

• No. of students who used Rice theorem 36.
• No. of students who built a reduction 72.
• Different languages as the source language of
  the reduction.
• HP 45 students
• L(?) or (L?) 12 (The symbol
  represents set complement.)
• Ld 12
• Lu 3

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Show strong need for canonical procedures

• A student When I do a reduction from HP I know
  what to do in each case, when it halts and when
  it does not halt. When I learn for the exam
  and solve problems from previous years instead
  of complicating the solution, showing that a
  property is a non-trivial property of languages
  in RE and using Rice theorem, I always do a
  reduction from HP.
• Interpretation A reduction from HP can
  sometimes be constructed automatically without
  understanding the subtle details.

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Teaching
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Teaching Programming Paradigms

• With Yulia Stolin

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Paradigms, their building blocks and
relationships among them
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Abstraction as an organizing theme for a
Programming Paradigms course
Programming paradigm
Programming language
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The Software Industry
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Software complexity

• many of the things we make with software today
  are more complex than most buildings and, as in
  building design, software design embraces many
  aspects function, safety, human interface,
  ergonomics, graphics, algorithms, data structure,
  program structure, protocol, and application
  interface, among others. (Singer, 1994).

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Abstraction in computing

• "Once you realize that computing is all about
  constructing, manipulating, and reasoning about
  abstractions, it becomes clear that an important
  prerequisite for writing (good) computer programs
  is the ability to handle abstractions in a
  precise manner". (Devlin, 2003).
• Devlin, K. (2003). Why universities require
  computer science students to take math?
  Communications of the ACM 46(9), pp. 37-39.

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Abstraction in software development processes
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Abstraction in software development processes

• Traditional methods

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Abstraction levels in software development
processes

• Traditional methods

• Agile methods

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Abstraction in agile software development

• Small Releases
• Planning Game
• release and iteration
• Refactoring
• Pair Programming

• Agile methods

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What did I take from the research in AMT to the
research in Computer Science and Software
Engineering Education?

• Theoretical lesson
• The importance of abstraction
• Practical lesson
• Everything you learn is useful